Day Jobs?

I'm attending Ohio State University and hating every minute of it. I'm in my second year working on an engineering degree, but haven't decided what type cause when you get down to it they don't have any fun stuff available. I'm too far to turn back though because engineers are just about the only guys out there who have to take as much math and science as I have and I'm sure not going to have all that time and money be for nothing.
To make the money that OSU keeps taking from me I do all kinds of stuff. The main thing is working for a farm baling hay and straw and heloing deliver it to the racetrack and that kind of stuff, probably going to be the end of that soon as I'll have to start looking at internships and stuff. I also did some horse training for a few years, but had to quit that to keep my amature status at horseshows now that I'm over 18. I also take on any odd jobs with construction/remodeling type stuff that I have time for.
And I make knives part time, which I would like to step up as alot more serious business but I don't quite have the equipment together to make them at a very fast pace yet and school takes up a lot of time.

I gotta agree with Peter and say I'd like to live in the past. Really wish I could just saddle up a horse, grab a rifle and ride off into the woods sometimes.
 
Fetz, ain't too late. I retired from welding after 25 yrs. Course it was a medical retirment. Whatever it takes.

i work for co. now manageing accounts, inside sales, a little R&D, make coffe and fix the toilet.

I consider myself semi-retired I only work 40 hrs a week now.

Life is to short to have a crappy job. :D :D :D Really it is.

Life takes on a different flavor when your job tries to kill ya.Literally mine did.
 
Job, I gots no steenkn job! :D

I was a pharmaceutical researcher in chemistry for 30 years before my health fell apart and I had to take early retirement at 50. I'm proud to have a couple awards for research work on the two "popular" AIDS antiviral drugs from my old company, Abbott Labs, one of the pharma giants.

Now I'm a "fulltime" knifemaker; boy is that a joke! :) What it boils down to is, whenever I am hale and hearty enough to work, it's on knives and now a bit of nic-nac wire inlay and jewelry.

Retirement is a blast if you have hobbies, I highly recommend it! Buy your tools beforehand, though, pension money sux... :(
 
Thanks,Steve! It seems like most knife makers are professional folks. Knife makers are smart people! I worked for several companies that required a lot of business travel. the last one as a tech rep for a chemical and equipment company. They hired me away from an airline dead end job. My first day on the new job, the boss sent me to Troy,VT for two weeks. I then met him at the Moline,Ill.airport(MLI)for a 4 hour meeting,and then right back to the same VT plant for two more weeks.I traveled pretty much like that for over a year, and started wishing I was back working in the oilfields again. I wish I was making knives then. I could have visited makers and taken in shows all over the continent,for free! Hey,I am a Toyota man,too! P.S.,I spent 8 years in a packing house,a Wilson hog kill plant in Monmouth,Ill.,and learned a thing or two about knives.
 
Ha fitzo, just noticed where you lived. Was going to ask if you worked for one of Abbots facilities in IL, as norhtern IL is my old stomping grounds, but looking at your location, won't waste tiem asking. :)
 
Yeah, I worked at both the "original" chemical plant over on the lake in two different positions, and out at the "campus" by the interstate, also. I actually liked the lakeside better, more working class folks and fewer stuffed-shirts. I preferred to hang with the maintenance guys over the eggheads. Too many PhD chemists at one time is a nerd circus.... I am a nerd, too, :), but I like the guys who muck around in the spent lube oil a lot more. :D I always wanted to be a welder and machinist rather than a chemist.....
 
Yer scaring me, Nick. :D Not about what ya do, but IF I ever rented a skinflick (I don't) and I suddenly realized it's someone I know....:barf:...maybe you should do it like they did in the 50's and 60's and wear a disguise..
 
I'll be leery if I ever rent a "movie" with a character named Dick Steeler. :D
 
Dont tell my mother Im a professional Firefighter..She thinks i play piano in a whorehouse!!
 
I am an Automotive Engineer, basically a specialized Mechanical Eng. I work for a company called Benteler Automotive. We make car parts for the OEM's. Mostly stampings and weldments like instrument panel supports, hot stamping, roof rails, chassis components, door impact beams, exhaust manifolds, etc. Chances are if you own a car, you have one of our parts in it. It is a privately owned German company with offices and manufacturing plants world wide.

The plant I work at produces 80,000 door beams a day and heat treats more than 50 miles of tubing per day. My job is as Process engineer. Basically a glorified babysitter, since all I do is Program Management, bringing in dies, gages, and weld tools for new programs for Toyota and Honda.

Other than work, I hang out with my daughter. If I am not with my kid, I am either drinking Jack Daniels and Coke, making knives or pens, or kicking these damn cats around the house.;) Oh yeah plus i like to cruz around down south and find those little hotties and bring them back to Michigan. HeHeHe

Damn, I need to win the lotto so I can spen more time in the south. Must be something in the water down there, or maybe just that accent.:D
 
Construction worker, concrete foreman for years - now doing sitework [underground utilities and paving]. The great part about construction is the amount of scrap material lying about. Not all blade stock but usable for many of the things we need. All in all not a bad job, I'm outside, I don't punch a clock, I have the satisfaction of building something. I have a great wife, two sweet little girls, and a hobby bordering on obsession. Life is good! POOL
 
What does a Brane surgion do?

I work for a guy building custom homes. Basically he makes all the money and I do all the work. Not bad as far as jobs go in this area though. I need to find a career where I don't really have to work.
 
Hey, John, I went to college in Monmouth from '96-'00. I bet you learned more there than I did.

I don't envy your time there. The only thing that could possibly smell worse than Monmouth, IL is that slaughterhouse in Monmouth, IL. I never worked in the slaughterhouse, but I was an RA in Monmouth's version of "Animal House." It was not at all unusual to have beer bottle injuries or see a piece of college furniture in flames going over the third floor balcony. My last night on the job, we had a 40-year-old cop get himsef paralyzed by getting so drunk he fell over a 4-foot railing and landed on his head two stories down. He was drinking with his son, a freshman, the night of graduation. :rolleyes:
They've since demolished that place, about ten years too late.

(For those unfamiliar with the home of the Fighting Scots, it's a pretty little town situated directly on top of massive deposits of sulfur. The water tastes like there are scrambled eggs at the bottom of your glass and, when you're new in town, gives you uncontrollable diarrhea for the first few days. When the wind is right, you can't smell anything but pure sulfur. Lemme tell you, when it's over 100 degrees and you're still an hour away from the end of your second football practice of the day, the smell is near-lethal.

I'm a teacher by trade, working as an aide in a special-ed classroom this semester. I hope to be hired on as an English teacher at the same school for the coming fall.

If any of you saw the "News of the Weird" type stories about a middle school food fight so bad that the janitors had to use snow shovels to clean up the mess. . . . well, that was us! It wasn't any of my kids, and the part about the snow shovels is a bit of a half-truth, but it was pretty spectacular as food fights go.
 
neat story, GDP...

I am an architect. I have worked on many different kinds of projects from churches to schools to medical buildings to custom homes. Brings in a heckuvalot better pay than knifemaking, but nowhere near the satisfaction. Also, I teach Humanities once night a week at the local community college. Architecture pays the bills, knifemakings satisfies the itch, and teaching keeps me "in touch"...

Aside from those, I've managed to do some web design for about 6 years now. Again, not for the pay, but for the fun.

Somehow I manage to squeeze it all in without neglecting my 2 lil' boys. I have my wife to thank for helping me see the value of limiting my TV time to 2 hours per week (Fri night, 9-11) and my internet time to around 8 hours per week (technically, it is part of my "work" time...:rolleyes: )
 
Whew, let’s see,,,about 31 years ago, I struck my first “ARC” as a welder for Electric Boat, in Groton , CT., and have been in the construction business since, with the exception of 2 years after being laid off. 1 year of which was retraining in computer networking and 1 year as the Network Administrator for a "Plastics Information" company in Providence, RI.

I thought the “grass would be greener” on the other side of the fence, you know, no more preheated steel while welding in July, or working on non-preheated steel in February. I found out the in this case, I wanted to climb (can’t jump) over the fence and get back into the construction industry, so that’s what I did.

My first foray back into Construction Industry was as a Pipe Welding superintendent building a power plant (fossil fuel) in Istanbul, Turkey, what a trip that was! When that adventure was finished, I did some contract work as a Quality Control man (weld inspector) for several other power plants around the North East States, i.e. Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island.

Since then I have gotten a job for a company, which used to be Grinnell, now we are Anvil International, and again we service the power industry. Our main products are pipe hangers. These hangers are usually spring loaded (to accommodate thermal growth) and we build them to suspend loads ranging from 100# to 100,000# :eek:

I started with Anvil as a technical service engineer, and traveled all over the world to inspect, install and otherwise service the critical pipe lines at power plants. When I say critical, these pipelines are for the steam from the boiler to the turbine and temperatures are generally over 1000o F with PSI ranging from 500# to over 3000# (super critical).

The worst part about the traveling is that I usually spend only several days to a couple of weeks on the job. Heck, on one job I was gone from home for 12 days, only 3 of which were spent on the job, an oil rig in the Sea of Okhotsk, off the east coast of Russia, now that was a real trip!!

I really got sick of all that traveling since “911”, more time spent at airports for security reasons, just a real PITA!

I have since tranfered departments, and now take care of the NDE needs of our company and other clients in the construction field. My NDE duties include Visual Inspection, Radiographic, Liquid Penetrant, Magnetic Particle and Ultrasonic testing. I still mess with welding; cause “welding is a better hobby than a living”. Up until a couple of years ago all of my welding experience was “ARC” whether the process is MIG, TIG or stick welding. Not until I met and started spending time around knife makers (in New Bedford) did I ever use “coat hanger” for weld wire using Oxy/Fuel process.

Other than that, I like to take my Harley and go camping with my wife, play my guitar, and make knives. But being the "Great Procrastinator", I have quite a few unfinished blades that I have forged.:D :D :cool:
 
I was born a poor black child... Always saving for Nick Wheeler porno movies!!! I mean have you ever seen his girlfriend??..HAHAHAHA:D
 
Wow, what a bunch.

I'm a sort of, almost, part time, maker. I've ground a few blades and then started a major shop improvement project and hopefully this weekend will finish it up (after eight months) and get back to the knifemaking thing.

For a day job, I'm the VP of a Independent Manufacturer's Representative firm in the Consumer Electronics Industry specializing in higher end home theater and stereo products and accessories. I work for a small company that represents a dozen high end audio, video and furniture manufacturers in the Southwest US, based in Los Angeles. We are basically a localized outsource sales and marketing organization that a manufacturer would hire to have a stronger local presence than an in-house sales force would likely provide. We also bring a much more in depth view of our market to the table as we see all most all the dealers in the marketplace and sell them one or more different product lines, so we have a better handle on the overall business climate in our market than a factory guy would and can open doors due to existing relationships.

I wear a lot of different hats. Mostly I'm a field sales rep who visits hifi and home theater stores and custom installers and spreads the gospel about the products my manufacturer's build (and we represent a lot of the best!). Sometimes when a factory screws up (mis-hip, backorder, defective unit, etc.), I have to be a Fireman. I do a lot of both formal and informal product trainings. There's also a large political component to my job as we have to balance the many relationships between out factories and our many dealers. There are some instances where I might sell a particualr account six or seven different lines of product, and not all factories always behave the same. Sometimes I have to sever a relationship with a dealer on one factory's instructions, while continuing to sell him several other lines which are important to both his company and ours. It can get pretty akward at times. After eight years as a rep, I have developed relationships with most of the folks I do business with, some of whom I used to compete with when I was in retail and custom installation jobs. Many of whom I consider friends.

This week was an interesting example: I had a factory guy in visiting the territory who wanted to see all the current and prospective dealers. He was to be in town for three and a half days and we had to visit our existing dealers and a couple prospective dealers. I drove all over Southern California, averaging 300 miles and three meetings per day. We did sales trainings, evaluated a couple dealers whose franchises will likely be terminated, congratulated a couple who are doing exceptionally well and ended the week with a nice dinner at Ruth's Chris in San Diego with our local dealer there. Fine steaks were had by all. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't enjoy much of the Stag's Leap Merlot as I had to drive the 150 miles home after dropping the factory guy off at his hotel at 10:30 PM. But it was a nice dinner with a good dealer and his staff, and a factory guy I like, so even though it was a 65 hour week (ain't seen my shop much this week), it didn't completely suck. We even got so sit and look at the Pacific Ocean on a beach in Corona Del Mar for a half hour yesterday as we were early for a meeting with a dealer who is located right on the Pacific Coast Highway and had some time to kill. It was sunny and relaxing in th emiddle of a hectic week.

I also built our lame website www.lpsales.net and help with our IT needs.

It's a mixed bag, and it really is a lot of work, but it pays pretty well and I get to have some fun and travel a bit.

John
 
I've got a degree in Accounting and Bus. Mgmt. Got tired of being in an office all day. Went to work for a guy opening a pawn shop and then opened my own. Been doing what I like for 16 years. Buying and selling guns, knives, jewelry, cameras, etc.,etc. Get to meet new people everyday and never a dull day. Also deal in Law Enforacement supplies. I fly fish whenever I get the chance and spend a lot of time with the grandkids. Can't complain. Life is grand when you do what you really like. Nights are spend grinding and finishing knives. Can't get any better than that.

Maracel
 
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